


Cat Fancy

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Cats, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Just Add Kittens, Past Abuse, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-11 03:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17439473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Pre-season-one. Joy finds a kitten in the rain.





	Cat Fancy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etothey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> Absolutely no kittens were harmed in the making of this story. (The potential for animal harm is briefly implied at one point, but does not happen.)

"Joy, do you have the Markowitz prospectus ready for --"

Ward stopped. He distinctly remembered seeing his sister come back from lunch (more like _dash_ back) but her office appeared to be empty.

A moment later, there was a thunk from under the desk and Joy appeared. "Ward," she said pleasantly, straightening up very fast while smiling and trying to smooth down her tousled hair.

"Joy," he said, carefully.

It was good to have his sister back at Rand, with a newly minted degree in hand, a grown woman that he felt like he was still getting to know. A grown-up Joy -- who Ward desperately wished (in some deep part of his soul) had just taken her degree and fled to the far side of the country, away from Harold and the Hand and all the other things she didn't know about.

But she hadn't done that, of course, because she had no reason to; there was a nice corner office and an excellent job in the family business waiting for her. So now he was still feeling out how to deal with his sister as a peer and an equal in the business, rather than the pigtailed girl following him around and begging him to play with her or help her with her homework. (Not that she'd ever needed much help. Not from him.)

It didn't help when she did things like this. What the hell _had_ she been doing under there, anyway? Joy was still giving him a bright, deceptively innocent smile, but Ward couldn't help noticing that she'd taken off the jacket to her business suit that he distinctly remembered seeing her in earlier (sea foam green, to her sea foam skirt), leaving her in nothing but a light, sleeveless blouse, unseasonable for the weather. And she kept casting nervous glances down at her desk.

He didn't know how to deal with his sister as an adult, damn it. And that was probably what made him burst out with: "Joy, do you have a _man_ under there?"

"What?" She gave him a startled and baffled look, then narrowed her eyes. "What the hell, Ward. What kind of a question is that?"

"Well ... you ... the ..." He waved a hand helplessly, groping around for a better explanation and not finding one. "Prospectus," he managed.

"Oh, that." She shot him a look that promised there _would_ be a talk later, and began sorting through the papers on her desk, but she froze at a small squeaking sound that Ward at first interpreted as some kind of ringtone or computer sound.

It came again, and it came from under the desk.

"Joy --" 

He strode around the corner, having no idea what he was going to see, while Joy desperately jockeyed to get herself in front of him. There was her missing jacket, a bundle of slightly damp sea foam green, and there was a small, moving --

"Joy, get out of my way."

\-- scrap of fur, which had just ejected itself from the jacket and gone on walkabout around the underside of the desk.

Ward crouched down to get a better look. Joy, after a moment, followed him down.

"That's a cat," Ward said after a minute.

It was actually, properly a kitten, or at least he thought it was too small to be an actual grown cat, although he couldn't see it very well because it had retreated to the farthest shadows under the desk. All he could see were a pair of gleaming eyes and a vague small cat-shape.

"It was outside in the rain," Joy said, her voice defiant. 

"We're running a pharmaceutical company, Joy, not a rescue facility for homeless kittens."

"Yeah, that's why I tried to hide it. I knew you'd say that. You're so _uptight,_ ever since --" She stopped, but he could hear the words hanging in the air between them: _Ever since Dad died._

His breath caught on the knife edge of the unfairness of that accusation. _Maybe because I've been trying to keep this company afloat and dealing with DAD while you were off --_

Living her life. Getting her degree. Doing the things that any young woman of 22 wanted to do, and had the leisure to do, because he'd done everything in his power to make sure she could.

And for some goddamn reason that made him think of fucking Danny Rand, a decade dead, who'd had everything Ward had wanted, and none of it had done him any good; he'd gone to a snowy grave in the Himalayas instead.

Ward took a breath and reached under the desk, over Joy's yelp of "Ward, no!" He had to be this person, this stand-in for Dad, and Dad had never let them have pets, had always scoffed at the idea. A kitten running loose around the Rand offices was absurd. Dad would never stand for it. And Dad _would_ hear about it, one way or another.

"Ward!"

His fingers closed on damp fur, and he pulled it out, ignoring the prickle of small claws sinking into his skin. For the first time, he got a good look at it.

It was a golden-orange ball of fluff, drying out into a puffball. It was much younger, much smaller than he'd expected. With his fingers wrapped around it like a cage, it had frozen up. Soft fur pressed against his fingers, like holding a living ball of lint. Or ... no ... a baby bird or something. He could feel its heart beating rapidly against his hand.

Maybe it was just because he'd been thinking of Danny, but it did actually sort of remind him of dead Danny. It even had blue eyes.

"Ward," Joy said in a small voice, and she was looking at him in a way she'd never looked at him before, a way that made him feel, for a minute, a little like Dad. It wasn't a good feeling. And the thought came to him that she thought he was going to hurt it.

 _Dad would._ That thought startled him, surfacing from the back of his brain. Dad wouldn't care. And Ward didn't care either, he _didn't_ , it was just that it _was_ very soft, and very small.

"What the hell, you little weirdo," Ward said, shifting his grip so he was holding it carefully against the front of his suit. Probably getting cat hair on himself; he'd need to take care to pick all of it off before he went to see Dad in the penthouse. Probably catching fleas, too. "How'd you get my sister wrapped around your finger like this, huh?"

The cat didn't do anything. It was scared, its little heart beating against him. God only knew what kind of a life it had had. Worse than his, maybe. He ran his thumb over the top of its head, and then Joy reached two fingers inside the cage of his own fingers and stroked it, and it began to purr, a tiny vibration against his chest.

Oh sure, of course it liked Joy better. Figured.

"You remember Dad never let us have pets," Joy said, stroking the top of its tiny head.

"For good reasons, Joy."

"I know, but ..." She looked up at him, and smiled a little. "It was just right there. Like I was meant to find it. What do you think, what if we keep it?"

"Do you really want to feed and housebreak a kitten?" he asked, hitting at the weakest spot he could. Dad _would_ find out about this, and ... the kitten was leverage. Or it could be. It wasn't yet, not over him. But ... it could be. Maybe. And that was something he couldn't afford. "It would be work, Joy. Work you can't afford. You need to have your head in the game, focusing on the company. You can't take the time to deal with a pet of any kind. Not right now."

"I guess you're right," she said slowly. "But ..." Her hand cupped its head. The cat butted its forehead against her, and then against Ward's fingers, and he felt an unwanted sinking sensation in his chest (he'd felt that, sometimes, when Joy had crawled into his bed and curled up with him after a nightmare; he'd felt it, even, when Danny had turned to him and leaned into Ward's side when he'd broken his arm and ... dammit ...).

He hadn't been wrong that Dad could find a way to use this cat against him. And Dad would.

"It needs a family, Joy." _And not this goddamn family._ "Take it to a cat rescue or something."

"I will," she said, stroking her fingers across the kitten's soft fur and then pulling them away. "But first, you need that prospectus, right? I'll get it."

Which she did, while he stood there holding the kitten, and it continued to purr in his arms, like it didn't even know what he was, what he stood for, what was going to happen to it if they kept it.

 

***

 

Joy came back the next day to tell him she'd sent the kitten home with Yelena from accounting, who had two kids who (according to Joy) were absolutely delighted with their fluffy new pet. Like he cared, honestly.

... Okay, so maybe, a little later, he looked up as much information on Yelena's family as he could find in Rand's files. It sounded like they'd be good for a kitten. At least better than this family could ever have been. He poured himself a drink and turned his attention to Rand spreadsheets and didn't think about cats or cat names or the feeling of its fluffy, trusting weight in his hands.

 

***

 

Three years later, Joy got a dog: already grown, already housebroken, and trained to respond to attack commands. The kind of pet Dad couldn't possibly find fault with, though by that point Dad had moved on from ever finding fault with Joy. 

The dog made its dislike for Ward clear from the beginning. He couldn't fault its taste.


End file.
